September 28, 2000

Keynote Address
Delivered at the HBCU Presidential Leadership Summit on Future faculty
Howard University, Graduate School
September 28-29, 2000

      Dean Taylor thank you very much. 
      You know, after an introduction like that you do say to yourself, I know I did, "Gee I'd like to meet that fellow sometime, he certainly does not sound like anyone I'm familiar with."  But I appreciate those generous and kind remarks and appreciate all of your coming to us, and to be with us for the next day and a half.
      Let me begin my remarks by simply saying, thank you. And it is a thank you with two dimensions. The first dimension, of course, is one of friendship and respect. We thank you for giving of your time to visit with us and each other here in the nation's capital, Washington, DC. The second thank you, and all of my presidential colleagues and visiting provosts can well appreciate this, is a strategic thank you. It is strategic because in very simple and direct terms, without you the Graduate School of Howard University would be a decidedly different place, and not for the better. Without you, the principal sending institutions that give luster to our graduate institutions here on campus, our graduate programs simply would not exist. You continue to be the principal sending institutions to Howard University. So that's the strategic thank you. But beyond our thanks, I'm here tonight to pledge anew our commitment to providing your graduates with the very best graduate educational experience that this nation has to offer. And so we are just delighted to welcome you and delighted as well to extend those thanks to you.
      At our table, we have been discussing a number of issues and I'd like to revisit one or two of those issues. One issue has to do with what I've characterized as institutional articulation. Not articulation that relates to the transfer bill of your credits, not articulation that relates even to the maintenance of joint or common programs. But, institutional articulation in a way and the manner in which we begin to align ourselves one with the other to strengthen each other. And I think that this is absolutely possible. And indeed as I look forward, I think there will be more and more necessity that we do so. But first let me say a word about the possibility and why I think it's so possible.
      The HBCU community is unique in many ways. One way in which we are all unique is that though we are more than one hundred in number, we virtually all share a common history. We largely started at the same place. Virtually everyone of our campuses is the result either of some enlightened private philanthropy, some enlightened state policy decision, or some extraordinary individual effort. And whether it is enlightened public policy, private philanthropy or individual effort, we were all founded. 
And indeed if you will look at all of our charters, you will see language that mirrors the language in every other charter. Our charters speak to values such as leadership and service in making the lives of those who make up the greater African-American community better. If you look at our charters virtually every charter speaks in those terms. We were all founded for a purpose and the purpose was to make the lives of the greater African-American community better with our own strength and intellectual wherewithal and the strength and support of that larger African American community. 
      We also share in common that community. We have never been institutions of exclusion. We have always been institutions of inclusion. I don't know, based upon my research, of any Historically Black School or College that has ever been all black in terms of its leadership, its faculty, or its student body. That happens to be a little known fact of our collective lives. We've always been open, we've never excluded anyone. And we've been open because though truly dedicated to the uplift of the African American community, we have always been aware and cognizant of how we started and who helped start us and who has helped over time to sustain us. So we are institutions that share a common history and tradition and we're institutions that have sought to be particular in terms of our community in general, in terms of our openness to students, faculty, leadership and most assuredly to ideas. So we start at the same place and that's a great place to start when you think of institutional articulation. 
      And there's another reason why I think institutional articulation will work. It will work because the numbers are in our favor. It will be difficult for me to discuss institutional articulation if we were talking about a thousand institutions. We are not talking about a thousand institutions. We are talking about 117 or so institutions each with a unique history, each indeed with a glorious history, but if we work at it we can align ourselves in such a way where we no longer compete but we complement one another, and I think that is possible. To do that, we have to acknowledge our shared history and culture, if you will. And we have to take those steps to establish even greater trust amongst and between us. And, I hope tonight's program and tomorrow's full schedule will have as an overlay the notion of enhancing and building upon our trust. And I am especially optimistic on that point because in one large sense when you visit Tougaloo, when you visit Bennett, Jackson State, North Carolina A&T, Dillard, Lincoln, Fisk, or St. Augustine's, you are visiting Howard University. When you visit Howard University, you are visiting all of those other institutions and more. Why? because our families are so interconnected. We have been together for so long that we are largely as one.
      You heard just a few moments ago an introduction of some of our graduate students and you probably discerned that special and extraordinary residence of pride in stating I'm at Howard University but I'm a Dillard graduate. Well that is a sentiment and it is expressed with some passion because of the uniqueness of our shared experiences. We understand that. We don't have to explain to each other why there is that residence of pride. So we start with shared histories, with a shared awareness and knowledge of our institutions. All we need to do now is work on the mechanics. And I think we certainly can do that. 
      And beyond what we need to do for one another, we need to do something even more for the greater community. And here there is a real urgency. Many of us in higher education administration today and also in the classrooms look more like me than not. That is to say my age, and my youthful appearance and demeanor notwithstanding, I am closer to 60 than 50. When I was 22, the idea of 50 was something very strange. Now I will visit and meet with a colleague who is 65, 66 and a colleague might volunteer, "you know I'm thinking about slowing down a little bit, thinking about doing less." I say to myself "what's wrong with this person, he's a youngster for Pete's sake." My generation, even though we'll be fighting tooth and nail, my generation within a generation will be moved offstage. Either we will go voluntarily or we will be removed. But we will go, we will go. Who is going to replace us?
      Now we are going to talk a lot tomorrow about strategies for replenishing the professorate; and we really need to get more and more of our talented, engaged and involved young people into graduate education, the Ph.D., and once there, we need to really work hard to articulate persuasive reasons for pursuing higher education as a profession. 
      There is a second dimension of it as well. For our colleagues, especially those who are presidents, we have to begin to identify those folks who will be succeeding us as presidents. For far too long on our campuses, we have permitted the selection of the Chief Executive Officer to be almost a matter of happenstance or odd circumstance. In this world of intense competition, in this world of higher and higher rising benchmarks, of a more informed consumer, leadership of our campuses is too important to be left to happenstance. Maybe one way we can actualize the notion of institutional articulation is to come together at some other conference or conversation that may take place on your campus and talk about what we are doing to engage the next generation of leadership on our campuses. Now as president you know we think that our tenure is defined both day-by-day and forever. Well you know I met with the Board, I met with the faculty, I met with the alumni and we talked about a 15-year plan or 20-year plan and it's understandable why we feel that way. But we have to be increasingly concerned in my view about the young folks who are following us in the classrooms, in the studios, in the laboratories and also in the presidential suite. We really need to get at that. We know ourselves and we know what we need, what our institutions require. They require and deserve an extra dimension of sensitivity and that's very difficult to articulate and actualize outside of the community. Not to say that we should be exclusionary, not to say that if you're not a graduate of Huston-Tillotson, if you're not a graduate of Fisk, if you are not a graduate of Clark-Atlanta, you need not apply; of course not. What we are saying is that our institutions are so important, so precious, we want to be actively involved, proactively involved in selecting, identifying and helping the next generation of leadership. And as President the emphasis is always on the next generation of leadership. This generation is continuing to serve and we will continue to serve. 
      Let me just share one or two other thoughts and observations with you if I may. Let me just speak for a moment to one or two challenges to our going forward with future faculty fellows programs and how we can perhaps meet some of those challenges. One challenge of course is a question of dollars and cents. How are we going to convince our best and brightest to pursue graduate education and the challenge, the difficulty and the length of graduate education when the economy, when this siren song of full employment, this siren song of opportunity and benefits and excitement wails out there somewhere? How are we going to do that? And secondly, how are we going to find and sustain the resources to provide our graduate students with more than the deminimus standard of living as graduate students. And thirdly, how are we going to continue to provide them the intellectual infrastructure that they have a right to demand before they commit to our institution here at Howard or elsewhere? How are we going to do these things in a world in which the executive budget of the United States Government exceeds one trillion dollars, one trillion dollars. There seems never to be quite enough funding for us in our goals, in our aims and our inspirations. Another word about a trillion dollars. When I was in school, admittedly a long, long, time ago, I don't recall hearing the word trillion, I just don't recall hearing the word trillion; a hundred million from time to time, a billion perhaps, but never a trillion dollars. I gave a talk a couple of months ago before the Board of Trade in the District of Columbia and I talked about a trillion and tried to make real what a trillion dollars really means. Someone in the audience reminded me that the executive budget is more than a trillion, it's a trillion plus. And soon enough we may have to come up with another number. And as a kid I always thought that a gadzillion was just a word; but we are maybe moving toward that. And while all these big numbers are floating about in this booming economy, this stock market and in all these other good things, we still have to make hard and disciplined decisions in terms of the allocation of the modest resources available to us. 
      Or, here too, course articulation may give us a way to deal with this infrastructure arms race that I think we are engaged in. If we are clever, if we are willing to act on our trust and to act on our shared histories to perhaps consider ways and means of making if you will--and I don't want to use words like "centers of excellence" because I don't really know what that means, but, identifying and then supporting sister institutions that can and have residential expertise that we can all participate in via technology. We have a shared history and culture and we have trust; the rest again, in my view, is mechanics, just mechanics. I think that can happen. So that when we approach a graduate student or we seek to engage an undergraduate student to actively consider graduate education we can explain to them why: 1) we can afford to support and sustain them; and 2) how they will not be short-changed in terms of their access to the latest technology, their access to other resources that they might find at some ostensible comprehensive institution. And so I think we can hopefully turn our attention to that as well. 
      There is so much more I could speak to Dr. Taylor. Dean Taylor was kind enough as I began to think about my remarks tonight to share some statistics with me. I won't repeat them except to say that there has not been very much change over the last decade. The number of students of color pursuing graduate education, certainly at the Ph.D. level, and who obtained the Ph.D. level has been relatively flat for far too long, we know that. We know that in certain discreet disciplines we have little if any presence. We know that of the nearly 550,000 members of the post secondary professorate the African American community comprises about 5 percent. And we know that we are all troubled at the notion of our children not having present before them men and women who not simply look like them but who have and bring to that discussion, to that dialog, to that mentoring relationship that special sensitivity. We understand and we are concerned about that as well. 
      Well we are concerned about a lot of things and there is much more that we could be, I could talk about concerns, but we take great heart and we are cheered by the future and the possibilities that present themselves in the future. And our great heart and courage is grounded in our success. As I mentioned a little earlier tonight to one of our colleagues, if you reverse the tape, and restart the tape a hundred and forty years ago, the likelihood that 140, 130, 125 or 100 years later we would have more than 100 historically black schools and colleges still standing, still producing, still important, still contributing to this nation... I suspect the odds were very, very long indeed. 
      Here at Howard University we talk about the circumstances surrounding the founding of Howard University in 1867. The audacity of our founders to think that a university could be established for persons who a scant year or two years earlier, or three years earlier were in bondage. The audacity, the courage, the vision, that must have taken to think in those terms; and, to think about our own special histories on all of our campuses. I suspect that if our founders were here today they would not only say well done but they would say "I'm amazed." And we have all the reason, not only to be amazed, but to cheer ourselves. 
      Let me end tonight with where I began by thanking you not simply for coming, no simply for those strategic reasons but for giving our founders and all of us continued reasons to cheer. Thank you.